WCU professor, alumnus bring glass blowing demo to campus
Cole Johnson (right) demonstrates glass blowing for WCU alumnus and Jackson County Green Energy Park technician Kevin McNiff
By Cam Adams
Timm Muth, an assistant professor of practice in the College of Engineering and Technology at Western Carolina University, looks at glass differently than most. Glass is more than just the material that makes windows.
It’s the “material of the 21st century.”
That’s why Muth partnered with the Jackson County Green Energy Park to bring live glass blowing demonstrations to WCU and his Engineering Materials and Processes class.
“We’re doing a module on glass now, and I feel like that’s the best way for engineers to really understand the material to have their hands on it,” Muth said. “When we learned about steel, we had a blacksmith come out. When you learn about glass, you gotta have a glass person come out so they can literally get their hands on it and see how that material reacts.”
Glass blowing is a glass-forming technique where one can blow air through a tube and shape heat-softened glass. The process can make bottles, vases and more.
While Muth realizes glass blowing is an old-school method, glass can also be used for much more technologically advanced materials like solar panels and high-speed internet cables.
“My materials book in there had three paragraphs on glass and that was it, so I feel like they really need to be introduced to this, and I don’t see many other schools offering any instruction on glass,” Muth said.
Muth knows of at least three students who have taken Engineering Materials and Processes and went on to become fiber optic engineers at Corning Glass. And like that trio of engineers, Muth has seen his students take an interest in it.
“Every student that’s had the chance to do it has just loved it,” Muth said. “They don’t want to just sit in a seat and have somebody lecture to them for days and days and days. They want to get out and do something active as well.”
Cole Johnson, a 2015 WCU alumnus, also took a great interest in glass during his time as a Catamount, and as a glass artist at JCGEP, he returned to campus to not only assist in demonstrating with Muth’s class, but several other students, faculty and staff at WCU as well.
“I was doing glass while I was in school, but they didn’t have a program here, so I was having to go off campus to learn stuff, so it’s pretty neat to be involved in something that is bringing that here, so maybe somebody that sees it will get interest or maybe it’ll spark something in them,” Johnson said.
Muth hopes this opportunity can get students to look at glass a little differently, too.
“That’s part of the beauty of having such a small, flexible school like we do is we can do some different things like that, and they give us that flexibility as instructors to find a way to present the material to the students in a way that’s going to give them the best education possible,” Muth said.
